I live close to praça seca and I can give you some heads up about that neighborhood.

1- Is it dangerous ?
Yes, that are some favelas nearby, try to stick around with your friend if you wanna leave his house.

2 - any kind of good entertainment ?
Some bars ( not very good ones ) where you can find some cheap beer, but in general that is not much to do in praça seca, to find some good places to hang out you ´d want to go to Barra da tijuca or the south part of Rio de janeiro, like lagoa, gavea or ipanema.

besides from these 2 points, thats not much to talk about praça seca, it´s just a regular neighborhood, it definitely not a very interesting place to visit.

I expected it to be boring there and don't anticipate doing a lot in the neighborhood. I know I'll be traveling around to a lot of parts of Rio. About how long is it to travel by car to places like Maracana or the south of Rio?

Also, I follow a praça seca account on Twitter and they were posting a lot about firefights taking place multiple nights in a row over the weekend. It sounded like it was not normal for that area but I can't find much more information. I did hear that a kingpin was arrested there recently and wasn't sure if it was related. Have you heard anything like that recently?

It's pretty dangerous right now at some places. The neighborhood is kinda big, so some places are way safer than others. But it is still dangerous to walk alone at night (like every single place in Rio de Janeiro) it would be better to stick with your friend.

There's not much to do around, but you cand find a couple of interesting bars and a gay club (that's very famous now, since one of the biggest gay clubs in Rio closed a few years ago). That's not a residential or comercial neighborhood, just a connection between West and North zones of Rio de Janeiro.

nope, havent heard a word about it = /.
Its not that far to get to Maracana or the south of rio from there ( 30 min drive, assuming you are luck enough to face good trafic ). where are you from and when are you visiting rio ?

I'm from USA, traveling down next year for the World Cup for a couple weeks. I know most of my time will probably be spent at a stadium or fan zone but was curious how the neighborhood and its proximity to other things might be.